Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s January 17, 1961 farewell address to the nation is mostly widely known for the former president’s warning of “the unwarranted influence…[of] the military-industrial complex” (hereafter MIC). However, a “less-widely known, seldom quoted, and often poorly understood”– one could add academically under-analyzed - of Eisenhower’s critical phrases from the same speech is “the danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite (hereafter “STE”).”1 This phrase has regained salience in the United States over last few years among a sociopolitical community critical of government COVID-19 protocols, Big Tech censorship, and centralized, top-down, elite-driven “public-private partnership” solutions to global concerns. Historical analysis will demonstrate Eisenhower’s conception of the STE was quite narrow and limited, and this myopia – whether accidental or intentional - lead to a distorted view of who had captured public policy. A review of the literature produced by contemporary critics of technocracy will show these critics have a broader understanding of the problem than did Eisenhower. These critics do not share a common political ideology, but, through the application of power structure analysis, this diverse lot of critics can come to a common understanding of the “STE threat,” avoid blind alleys of idealism and conspiracism, and, perhaps, forge a political coalition to confront it. Through reflection on this critical, historical phrase and its contemporary deployment, the author hopes to aid conference attendees and the general public to “identify and account for the connections between two emerging contemporary themes…the elite public-private ‘superclass’” with its “unprecedentedly vast economic…social, political and economic influence” and “the rise of a system called technocracy.”

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